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Wandering fire, October 2025 Wandering, Boddington

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2025, 07:09 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2025 in Wandering, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,308 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1601th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 704 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
7,308ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
10 Oct 2025 – 17 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
10 Oct
2025
Heat detections
509
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Energy released
4.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct17 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

1011121314151617

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

28°high
54km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 19 Oct.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,497 ha in 2017, 37 ha in 2018, 574 ha in 2019, 165 ha in 2023, 1,639 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,593 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Wandering where it started
    6,791 ha reached on 10 Oct
    3.6 %
  2. Boddington
    535 ha reached on 12 Oct
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
10 Oct 18.6 °C 49 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
11 Oct 20.8 °C 48 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
12 Oct 23.2 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
13 Oct 23.0 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
14 Oct 25.7 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
15 Oct 20.9 °C 50 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
16 Oct 22.9 °C 52 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
17 Oct 28.0 °C 26 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Oct after 19.2 °C 53 % 59 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
19 Oct after 16.4 °C 60 % 50 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 3 Oct 2025
After · 24 Oct 2025

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 11 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1018 µg/m³
Optical depth0.21
891011121314151617181920
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 509Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Wandering fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2025 and 17 October 2025: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,308 hectares (73.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Wandering (6,791 ha, 3.6 %); Boddington (535 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 000

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 000.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.